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Brest ( Belarusian: Бе́расьце, Брэст; also known as Brest-Litovsk and in Polish as Brzesc Litewski, Brzesc nad Bugiem or Brzesc Bialoruski; Russian: Брест) is a city (population 290,000 in 2004) in Belarus close to the Polish border where the Western Bug and Mukhavets Rivers meet. It is the capital city of the Brest voblast and is located at 52°08'N 23°40'E.
It was a main railroad transfer point during Soviet times and it remains a rail transfer point and customs/immigration checkpoint on the Berlin/Moscow rail line. Some of the land in the rail yards is contaminated due to transhipping of radioactive materials during the Soviet regime. In Brest the rail cars had to be transferred between the Russian broad gauge and the European standard gaugeAs railways developed and expanded one of the key issues to be decided was that of the rail gauge (the distance between the two rails of the track) which should be used. The eventual result was the adoption throughout a large part of the world of a standa.
The city was founded by Slavs as Bereste in 1017Events Canute the Great is acclaimed king of England. England is divided into the earldoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. Abd-ar-Rahman IV is Umayyad caliph, succeeding Suleiman II. Canute marries Emma of Normandy. Births October 29: Henr but was conquered by the MongolsThe Mongols are an ethnic group that originated in what is now Mongolia, Russia, and China, particularly Inner Mongolia. They currently number about 8. 5 million and speak the Mongol language. They form one of the 56 nationalities officially recognized by in 1241Events April 11 Mongols under the command of Batu defeat Bela IV of Hungary in the Battle of Muhi. Mongols of Golden Horde defeat feudal nobility including Knights Templar in the battle of Liegnitz Births Deaths April 9 Henry the Pious, Duke of Silesia Au and by LithuaniaThe Republic of Lithuania ( Lithuanian Lietuva Polish Litwa, German Litauen, French Lituanie, Spanish Lituania, Estonian Lituania, Finnish Liettua) is a republic in Northeastern Europe. One of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea, it shares border in 1319Events Births April 26 King John II of France Deaths 1319.. It was renamed Brest-Litovsk in the 14th century13th century 14th century 15th century more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 14th century was that century which lasted from 1301 to 1400. Events The transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age Beginning of th and became part of the combined Polish and Lithuanian kingdom in 1569. In 1596 it hosted the council which established the Eastern Catholic or Uniate Church.
Brest passed to Russia when Poland-Lithuania was partitioned for a third time in 1795. It was captured by the German Empire in 1915, during World War I. In March 1918, in a fortress on the western outskirts of Brest at the confluence of the Western Bug and Mukhavets Rivers, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, ending the war between Russia and the Central Powers and transferring the city and its surrounding region to the sphere of influence of the German Empire. This treaty was subsequently annulled by the treaties which ended the war.
The newly reconstituted Poland took control of Brest in 1919, a development that was formally recognised by the Treaty of Riga in 1921. The Brest fortress, heavily damaged during the World War I, was turned into war materiel magazines and its central part into a prison. In 1930 a trial of Wincenty Witos took place there. During the Polish September Campaign the city was defended by a small force of four infantry batalions under Gen. Konstanty Plisowski against the XIX Panzer Corps of Gen. Heinz Guderian. After four days of heavy fighting the Polish forces withdrew southwards on September 17.
The city was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1939 in accordance with the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact partitioning Poland signed with Nazi Germany in August, 1939. Most Belarusans considered it a reunification of the Belarusan nation under one constituency ( BSSR at that time).
On June 22, 1941 the city was attacked by Nazi Germany at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, with the fortress in which the 1918 treaty had been signed acting as the focal point for the resistance. It held out for a month, establishing the city's status as the only Hero-Fortress among the Hero Cities of the Soviet Union. Brest's Jewish community was decimated under Nazi rule. The city was retaken by Soviet forces in 1944.
Accoring to agreements of the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Brest changed hands yet again, being passed to the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. It is now part of the independent country of Belarus.